face. Behind him on the tiled entrance floor was a liquor store bag that appeared to be leaking booze and blood. Recreating the sequence of events didn’t require much imagination.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You tripped coming in the door and fell face forward on your bottle of rye. It broke and cut your cheek.”
Howard eyed me malevolently. “You always were a smart broad. Now take me to the emergency ward.”
Two of my four children were risk-takers, and I knew from experience that the waiting time in emergency could be hours. I drove Howard to a walk-in clinic near the hospital. Whether it was the basset droop of Howard’s good eye or the blood that was dripping from his towel to the clinic floor, we were attended to quickly. Howard had just finished answering the admitting clerk’s questions when a nurse appeared and directed him to examining room F. I went with him.
“Are you going to hold my hand?” he asked.
“No, but you might have trouble remembering the doctor’s instructions. I’m here for backup.” I had just memorized the symptoms of West Nile Fever from a poster on the wall when the doctor came in. He was middle- aged and courtly. He glanced at the admission sheet on his clipboard. “Good evening, Mr. Dowhanuik,” he said. “My name is Winston Govender.” He removed Howard’s bloody towel and peered at the wound. “A nasty one,” he said. “What made the cut?”
“Glass,” Howard said.
“Was the glass sterile?”
“Bathed in alcohol. As was I,” Howard said gloomily.
Dr. Govender’s smile was perfunctory. He went to the sink and scrubbed his hands. “I’ll stitch you up now. You were fortunate, Mr. Dowhanuik. Just a few millimetres higher and you could have damaged your eye.”
“My lucky day.”
“It was indeed,” Dr. Govender said, and he set to work.
Howard’s cut required nine stitches. When the procedure was completed, Dr. Govender washed his hands again and then pulled up a stool next to Howard and scrutinized his handiwork. The flesh around the black line of stitches was already puffing up and blooming purple. Howard was going to look like hell in the morning and for a lot of mornings after.
“You’re going to experience some pain tonight,” Dr. Govender said. “I can give you something to ease it, but you must answer a question for me first. How much do you drink, Mr. Dowhanuik?”
Howard sighed heavily. “Not enough, Dr. Govender. Not nearly enough.”
We left without a prescription, but with written instructions about how to care for the wound. When I pulled up in front of Howard’s, he thanked me and beat a path to his door. I wasn’t about to let him escape that easily. I followed him in, found the phone book, opened it to the number for Alcoholics Anonymous, and handed it to Howard.
Howard glanced at the page. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“You’re supposed to call the number,” I said.
Howard glared and thrust the phone book back at me. “Ian always said that you were a goddamn Sunday- school teacher.”
I felt the sting. “What else did my husband say?”
“That you were a moralist – a pain in the ass who never got over being twenty-two and idealistic. That everything was black or white for you. That you never grew up enough to understand that life is lived in shades of grey.”
A lump of sadness formed at the back of my throat.
Howard peered at me. “Jesus, now you’re crying. I’m sorry, Jo. What can I do?”
I handed him back the phone book. “Call the number,” I said. “Call Alcoholics Anonymous.”
When I got home, Zack’s car was in my driveway, and he was in my living room staring at his BlackBerry. I came into the room and he held out his arms. “At last,” he said.
I went to him. “Have you been waiting long?”
“Nope. Just got here.” He looked at me closely. “Have you been crying?”
“Yes.”
“You want to talk about it?”
I took a tissue from my coat pocket and blew my nose. “Am I a moralist?”
“No,” he said, “you’re moral. There’s a distinction.” He leaned back and gave me an appraising glance. “I take it your question didn’t just come out of the blue.”
“Howard fell and cut his cheek open on a bottle of booze. I spent the last couple of hours at the Medicentre getting him stitched up.”
“And after Howard was stitched up he called you a moralist?”
“According to Howard, he was just quoting Ian, who apparently also called me a Sunday-school teacher and a pain in the ass.”
“Well, Ian’s not here to defend himself,” Zack said. “So why don’t we find ourselves a place where we can sit down and talk this out?”
As soon as we got into the family room, Zack pushed himself out of his chair onto the couch. I moved close to him, ran my hands over his chest, and breathed in his aftershave.
